THE PASSION OF
AMERICAN COMPOSERS FESTIVAL 2011
THE FESTIVAL AT A GLANCE his year, Pacific Symphony’s American Composers Festival (ACF) is part of the first-ever Southern California Philip Glass Festival. The Symphony, in partnership with Long Beach Opera, has assembled a month of events (see opposite page for a complete listing), all of which probe deeply into the life and music of Philip Glass, one of America’s most fascinating and pre-eminent living composers.
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The unifying theme for the Symphony’s 2011 ACF, led by Music Director Carl St.Clair, is the influence that India’s music and philosophy have had on Glass. The Festival focuses on the composer’s collaborations with Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar, whom Glass first met in India in 1965. Mixing Eastern and Western traditions, Glass’ heroic musical homage to a simple Hindu holy man paints an exquisite symphonic and choral picture of India emerging from centuries of foreign domination. ACF begins with the Classical concert Thursday through Saturday, with St. Clair conducting The Passion of Philip Glass, featuring Christópheren Nomura, baritone; Prism Quartet, saxophones; Janice Chandler-Eteme, soprano; Kevin Deas, bass-baritone and Pacific Chorale. The concert begins with an excerpt from “Meetings Along the Edge” from Passages, a 1990 collaboration between Glass and Shankar, with each having written arrangements around themes created by the other. The program also includes one of Glass’ most performed concertos, for saxophone quartet and orchestra, composed for the Rascher Saxophone Quartet in 1995. The concert rounds out with Glass’s epic The Passion of Ramakrishna, and includes pre- and post-concert talks with Glass and St.Clair. Continuing Sunday at 3 p.m., St.Clair and the orchestra further explore The Passion of Ramakrishna, Glass’s symphonic tribute to the 19th-century Indian spiritual leader, during Classical Connections, an informative and relaxed Sunday afternoon conversation and performance. Later Sunday evening at 7 p.m., the Symphony partners for a second time with Newport Beach Film Festival to present Behind the Score: The Illusionist. Glass provided the soundtrack for the 2006 mystery/thriller, The Illusionist, and this event features a screening of the film and panel discussion with the composer at the historic Regency Lido Theater in Newport Beach. The final Pacific Symphony event, Glass Plays Glass, takes place Monday, March 14, at 8 p.m. in the Samueli Theater and features Glass playing an evening of his original music composed for solo piano as well as a number of arrangements for organ or instrumental combinations. This years ACF also includes events with Long Beach Opera (LBO). Glass’ opera Akhnaten will be presented by LBO Saturday, March 19 and Sunday, March 27. For more information about the American Composers Festival visit: www.pacificsymphony.org/ACF, or join the conversation at www.pacificsymphonyblog.org The Passion of Philip Glass is generously sponsored by: THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS THE AARON COPLAND FUND FOR MUSIC
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FESTIVAL EVENTS
PRESENTED BY LONG BEACH OPERA AND PACIFIC SYMPHONY Sunday, February 27 • 11 a.m. LBOpera Cinema – Part I of the Qatsi Trilogy
Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (MOVIE)
Sunday, March 13 • 7 p.m.
Behind the Score: “The Illusionist” (MOVIE)
Art Theatre of Long Beach
Pacific Symphony/Newport Beach Film Festival Regency Lido Theater, Newport Beach
Directed by Godfrey Reggio, sweeping images of the natural environment colliding with the industrial world are fused with Glass’ modern synthesized music leaving viewers breathlessly floating through time and space.
Glass provided the soundtrack for the 2006 Academy-Award winning mystery/thriller, “The Illusionist,” starring Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti. This special screening features an in-person Q & A with the film’s composer Philip Glass.
Saturday, March 5 • 2-4:15 p.m.
Sunday, March 13 • 3 p.m.
Akhnaten and His World (LECTURE)
The Passion of Ramakrishna (CONCERT)
LBO and UCLA Egyptology UCLA, Lenart Auditorium, North Campus
Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall
The mysteries of Akhnaten and the society he tried to change are explained by professors and faculty from UCLA’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Culture (NELC)/ Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.
Music Director Carl St.Clair further explores the “The Passion of Ramakrishna,” Philip Glass’ symphonic and choral tribute to the 19th-century Indian spiritual leader, during Pacific Symphony’s Classical Connections.
Sunday, March 6 • 11 a.m. LBOpera Cinema – Part II of the Qatsi Trilogy
Monday, March 14 • 8 p.m.
Powaqqatsi: Life in Transition (MOVIE)
Samueli Theater
Art Theatre of Long Beach Directed by Godfrey Reggio, this moving film travels to Third World societies thrown into the path of industrialization and modern technology with a score that combines the sound of synthesizers and an orchestra while native instruments and human voices rise in song.
Glass Plays Glass (CONCERT) Philip Glass has had a long history of performing his own music, being among the first of a new generation of composer/performers. This evening features works composed for solo piano as well as a number of arrangements for organ or instrumental combinations. Saturday, March 19 • 7:30–10:30 p.m. Sunday, March 27 • 2:00–5:00 p.m.
Akhnaten (OPERA) Thursday–Saturday, March 10–12, 8 p.m. Pacific Symphony’s American Composer’s Festival 2011
Terrace Theater, Long Beach Performing Arts Center
The Passion of Philip Glass (CONCERT)
Completing the opera trilogy which began with “Einstein on the Beach” and “Satyagraha,” Glass explores the rise and fall of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhnaten and how his inner vision changed the world. Director Mitisek gives a pre-opera talk one-hour before performances.
Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall Mixing Eastern and Western traditions, Philip Glass’ heroic musical homage to a simple Hindu holy man paints an exquisite symphonic and choral picture of India emerging from centuries of foreign domination. Saturday, March 12 • 2–4:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 20 • 11 a.m. LBOpera Cinema - Part III of the Qatsi Trilogy
Glass in Conversation about Akhnaten (DISCUSSION AND
Naqoyqatsi: Life as War (MOVIE)
CONCERT)
Art Theatre of Long Beach
LBO and Los Angeles County Museum of Art Los Angeles County Museum of Art LBO Director Andreas Mitisek and Philip Glass join in a lively discussion of the composer’s spectacular opera, “Akhnaten” inviting the audience to participate in a Q&A. Cast members sing selections from the opera and concert pianist Michelle Schumann plays Glass compositions.
The aggressive pace of modern technology is depicted with enhanced imagery in what Director Reggio call “virtual cinema.” The score balances the effect of the startling images with a “sound world of ‘natural’ timbres” and features the superb cello of Yo-Yo Ma.
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SEGERSTROM CENTER FOR THE ARTS S A M U E L I T H E AT E R
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 8:00 p.m.
PRESENTS
PHILIP GLASS in a performance of
ETUDES AND OTHER WORKS
FOR
SOLO PIANO
This evening’s program consists of original music composed for solo piano as well as a number of arrangements for organ or instrumental combinations. All the music comes from the period dating from 1976 to the present and will include a selection of the following works:
Six Etudes (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, 9,10) (1994-1999) These etudes are part of an evening length work of 16 etudes for piano completed in 1999. Each etude approaches the piano in a somewhat different way, producing a highly diverse set of pieces. Mad Rush (1980) This piece was commissioned by Radio Bremen and originally composed for organ. Lucinda Childs choreographed a solo dance to this piece shortly after its premiere. Metamorphoses (Nos. 2, 3, 4) (1989) This is a set of piano pieces drawn from both Errol Morris’ film A Thin Blue Line and a staging of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, part of The Kafka Trilogy (The Process) by Gerald Thomas, first performed in Sao Paulo, Brazil. As both projects were undertaken at the same time, the music seemed to lend itself well to a synthesis of this kind. Dreaming Awake (2006) Originally written as a gift for a Tibetan studies center in New York City and later performed as a work for dance by choreographer Molissa Fenley.
Wichita Vortex Sutra (1990) Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass first collaborated on Hydrogen Jukebox, which had its world premiere at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina in 1990. The chamber opera included Wichita Vortex Sutra (1966), Ginsberg’s poetic reflection of the anti-war mood of the 1960s. This evening’s program runs approximately 80 minutes with no intermission.
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
PHILIP GLASS PIANO
&
COMPOSER
orn in Baltimore, Maryland, Philip Glass is a graduate of the University of Chicago and The Juilliard School. In the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and, while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar’s Indian music into Western notation. Upon his return to New York, he applied these Eastern techniques to his own music. By 1974, Glass had a number of significant and innovative projects, creating a large collection of new music for his performing group, the Philip Glass Ensemble, and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company, which he co-founded. This period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts, followed by the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, created with Robert Wilson in 1976. Since Einstein, Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. His score for Martin Scorsese’s Kundun received an Academy
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Award nomination, while his score for Peter Weir’s The Truman Show won him a Golden Globe. His film score for Stephen Daldry’s The Hours received Golden Globe, Grammy, and Academy Award nominations, along with winning a BAFTA in Film Music from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Original scores for the critically acclaimed films The Illusionist and Notes on a Scandal were recently released. Glass has received an Oscar nomination for his Notes score. In 2004, Glass premiered the new work Orion — a collaboration between Glass and six other international artists opening in Athens as part of the cultural celebration of the 2004 Olympics in Greece, and his Piano Concerto No. 2 (After Lewis and Clark) with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra. Glass’ latest symphonies, Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 8, premiered in 2005 with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and Bruckner Orchester Linz at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, respectively. 2005 also saw the premiere of Waiting for the Barbarians, an opera based on the book by J.M. Coetzee. Glass’ orchestral tribute to Indian spiritual leader Sri Ramakrishna, The Passion of Ramakrishna, premiered in 2006 at Segerstrom Center for the Arts (formerly Orange County Performing Arts Center). Glass maintained a dense creative schedule throughout 2007 and 2008, unveiling several highly anticipated works, including Book of Longing and an opera about the end of the Civil War titled Appomattox. In April 2007, the English National Opera, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Opera, remounted Glass’ Satyagraha, which appeared in New York in April 2008. Recent film projects include a score to Woody Allen’s film, Cassandra’s Dream, and a documentary on
Ray Kurzweil called Transcendent Man that premiered in April 2009. Glass’ next opera, based on the life and work of Johannes Kepler and commissioned by Linz 2009, Cultural Capital of Europe, and Landestheater Linz, premiered in September 2009 in Linz, Austria.
POMEGRANATE ARTS TOURING PRODUCER
ounded in 1998 by Linda Brumbach, Pomegranate Arts is an independent production company dedicated to the development of international contemporary performing arts projects. Since its inception, Pomegranate Arts has conceived, produced, or represented projects by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, London’s Improbable, Sankai Juku, Dan Zanes, and Goran Bregovic. Special projects include Dracula: The Music And Film with Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet; the music theater work Shockheaded Peter; Brazilian vocalist Virginia Rodrigues; Drama Desk Awardwinning Charlie Victor Romeo; Healing The Divide, A Concert for Peace and Reconciliation, presented by Philip Glass and Richard Gere; and Hal Willner's Came So Far For Beauty, An Evening Of Leonard Cohen Songs. Recent projects include the first North American tour of Goran Bregovic and the remounting of Lucinda Childs’ 1979 classic Dance. Pomegranate Arts will be re-mounting the Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, Lucinda Childs’ masterpiece Einstein on the Beach in celebration of Philip Glass’ 75th birthday in 2012.
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